Clement of Alexandria. "And those who lived according to the Logos were really Christians, though they have been thought to be atheists, as Socrates and Heraclitus were among the Greeks, and such as resembled them." 1 St. Augustine. "For the thing itself which is now called the Christian religion really was known to the ancients, nor was wanting at any time from the beginning of the human race until the time that Christ came in the flesh, from whence the true religion which had previously existed began to be called 'Christian;' and this in our day is the Christian religion, not as having been wanting in former times, but as having in later times received this name."2 Justin Martyr. "If, then, we hold some opinions near of kin to the poets and philosophers in greatest repute amongst you, why are we unjustly hated? By declaring the Logos the first-begotten of God, our Master, Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin without any human mixture, and to be crucified and dead, and to have risen again and ascended into heaven, we say no more in this than what you say of those whom you style the Sons of Jove." The most noteworthy passage amongst these quotations is that of St. Paul, where he asserts that, many years before our Gospels were known, he was the minister of a gospel that had been already preached to every creature under heaven. Who but the Buddhist missionaries had at that date even desired to promulgate such a gospel? Clement of Alexandria describes the "Christian Gnostic," who is "after the image and likeness of God," and whose 1 Clemen. Alex. Strom. 2 Opera, vol. i. p. 12. "soul must be consecrated to the light stripped of the integuments of matter." He is "only to do good out of love, and for the sake of its own excellence," which was a different doctrine from the Jewish gospel of ceremony and propitiation. I will cite here two sayings of Christ from the Gospel of the Ebionites : "I have come to abolish sacrifices; and if you do not cease to sacrifice, the wrath of God against you will not cease!" 1 Have I desired to eat flesh this feast of the Passover with you?" 2 The passage Luke xxii. 15 is supposed by some writers to give some sort of warranty to the second of these passages; but in any case they harmonise with Christ's sayings in Matthew about mercy and sacrifice. And as these have been excluded from the later Gospels, it may be argued that the reasons that prompted this exclusion would also apply to the passages that I have just cited from the Ebionite Gospels. I may mention here that I think the testimony of the Talmud has been ignored by Christian writers on quite insufficient grounds. Bellarmine and Bossuet, let us say, may not be thought the most impartial judges of the character of Luther, but they may be at least trusted to tell us the dogmatic points on which the great breach in Catholicism was effected. In the same way the Talmudic writers may not be strictly impartial in discussing the morality of the Virgin Mary, but a priori they ought to know how the great disruption of Judaism came about. The Talmud tells us that Jesus was initiated in Egypt by Joshua the son of Perachiah; that he practised sorcery, which he had learned in Egypt from his teacher. It states that he seduced many people into idolatry by rejecting the law and scoffing at sacrifices and the high 2 Ibid., n. 21. 1 Epiphan. Hæres., 30, n. 16. priests.1 This, stated in moderate language, is simply that Christ was initiated as a Therapeut in Egypt. By the outside world the early Christians were called "Gnostics," "Eclectics," &c. In Matthew, if the early Christians were Therapeuts, we have half-a-dozen verses foisted on chapters, a gospel; but if they were of the religion of Annas and Caiaphas, we have a gospel foisted on half-a-dozen verses. A curious passage from Eusebius may here be cited, and the reader can take it for what it is worth. Theologians agree that the original Gospel after Matthew was written in Hebrew, but whether our present Gospel is the same one is a controverted topic outside the region of our present inquiry. "Matthew, then, in the Hebrew dialect wrote the sayings (Móyia), and each person interpreted them as he was able." 1 This is the account of Papias. But Eusebius asserts that a certain Pantænus, president of the school of Alexandria, brought back this "Gospel of St. Matthew written in the Hebrew tongue" from India, which he had visited as an evangelist of the Word." It is said that Bartholomew had carried it there. The date of this finding of this Gospel, as Eusebius puts it, is vaguely called "about that time!" This is interpreted by Dr. Giles to mean about 180 A.D.3 The passage at any rate establishes the fact that there was communication going on between Buddhist India and Alexandria in early Christian times, a fact denied by Professor J. Estlin Carpenter. 2 RESULT. The Roman Catholics insist on the complete identity between the higher Judaism and Christianity, but hold that the Son produced the Mother. 1 Keim, Jesus of Nazara, vol. i. p. 22. 2 Eccl. Hist., v. 9. 3 Heb. and Christian Records, ii. 156. The disciples of Baur, both the very clerical and the very unclerical, substantially admit the identity between the higher Judaism and Christianity, but they hold that Christ and the early martyrs were active propagandists of the lower Judaism, the Judaism that put them to death. CHAPTER XIII. BUDDHISM IN THE CATACOMBS. To describe the religion of the Catacombs in two words, it was the tomb and saint worship of Buddhism, that is, a spiritualism based on the supposed influence of a corpse and its relics. Each chapel was the shrine of a saint, and each altar the lid of a sarcophagus. This is made plain by Mr. Formby.1 Immense exertions were made at a martyrdom to save the dead body, or at least a few bones, or a sponge dipped in blood. The Council of Carthage, cited by Cardinal Wiseman, decreed that all altars should be "overturned by the bishop of the place which are erected about the fields and, the roads as in memory of martyrs in which is not a body nor any relics." 2 The theory was, as I have shown from St. Ephrem, that the dead martyr at once came back with an aureole or crown, and from his tomb influenced mortal affairs. 3 We know that the early Christians celebrated the Lord's Supper at funerals, at the grave of the deceased. We know also that they administered the consecrated elements to the corpse. Leaving Catholic divines to draw a line between prayers and rites to a saint for his intercession and actual saint-worship, I must point out that here, in the early Christian Church, we find at once the exact rites 1 Ancient Rome and the Christian Religion. |